Well I wanted the background to disappear. So when it is up on the screen, the board and words just float there. With the codes you posted, are they the same number/letter codes for colours as used in GIMP?If they are, then why can I see the background?

thehippo8 wrote:Frankly Dim, I'm surprised by your response - it's not like you to be this negative. You are also wrong, there is an additional element of skill in this game beyond that of many other "classic" style maps. I think once this gets quenched you'll be surprised by the posibilities. In fact, I'm rather jealous that Koontz thought of the idea before me and all kudos to him!

i don't think i'm negative at all. anyway, you mention an "additional element of skill in this game". please enlighten me to what that is as i totally fail to see it.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku

koontz1973 wrote: So it is really going to be down to how well you can visualize the board as a whole.

this is actually the only gimmick of the map. and honestly it's not very gimmicky at all. any player that went through at least 1 chess game will immediately visualise the attack routes and plan his attack.

imagine this map without the knight attack rule.you would have 2 opposing sides with no bonuses, identical starting positions and perfect map symmetry.1. no bonuses means that you have NO strategic options to go for something small and easy to protect, to go for something risky and large etc. right here there's even no incentive to make the first move (unless you play with spoils) because mathematically speaking if 2 people have identical dice the one attacking the neutrals first will lose.2. identical positions means that in each and every game you will start the game and try to use the same strategy over and over again. 3. perfect symmetry also sucks because you don't have dead ends, you don't have one ways or ranged attacks or any other means of setting a trap or hiding in fog.

now, we can all agree that if somebody comes and presents this very map but without the knight attack rule he's going to get booted out of the foundry really really fast and his map binned right away.

now, in my opinion your map has the exact same flaws but it adds special attack routes. when i was in school (a long time ago) i used to make various sized chess tables during class and then try to fill them with 1 knight jumping over and over. similar to this game here: http://www.flash-game.net/game/2294/troyis.html. it was much more interesting than french lessons

anyway, the only thing about this map is that you have to plan your attack route a few moves in advance to make sure you can reach all the terits you want to. and there are 2 possibilities here:1. you're a complete retard that never heard of chess and can't plan ahead more than 1 move. in which case you'll never play this map after your first game.2. you are a normal person that played chess at least once and it's perfectly capable of planning an attack route. in which case you'll never play this map once you realised that luck is too important on this map.

i'm sorry but i don't really have any suggestions on how to improve this map other than a total redesign which involves more rules, the addition of bonuses etc.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku

DiM wrote:1. no bonuses means that you have NO strategic options to go for something small and easy to protect, to go for something risky and large etc. right here there's even no incentive to make the first move (unless you play with spoils) because mathematically speaking if 2 people have identical dice the one attacking the neutrals first will lose.

How come, if a player puts all 5 onto one territ and moves one square he leaves a single at the start and 6 or 7 on the one he moves to. The player who goes second has to attack 2 territs of 1 neutral to get to that stack of 6 or 7. Even if both do not lose a man to the neutrals, the player going second is going to attack with 6 to 7. In the majority of maps, 1v1 games are heavily biased towards to first player to go. This has eliminated that factor.

2. identical positions means that in each and every game you will start the game and try to use the same strategy over and over again.

Only if you ever play one person and you both use identical moves. One of the great things about the site is we play people, not machines. Just because you move C2 to D4, does not mean all of your opponents will move F7 to E5. This argument does not hold water even in 1v1 games. Thee are up to 8 players as well.

3. perfect symmetry also sucks because you don't have dead ends, you don't have one ways or ranged attacks or any other means of setting a trap or hiding in fog.

You are right about dead ends etc, apart from the ones you create for yourself. Saying that, a piece in the centre of the board is more powerful than one at the side. Fog brings a great element to this. You might know where your opponent is, but you can never tell where he has gone. All maps with classic bonus structures allow you to guess where an opponent is. Sometimes you are right, sometimes wrong.

now, we can all agree that if somebody comes and presents this very map but without the knight attack rule he's going to get booted out of the foundry really really fast and his map binned right away.

Binned right away, no, but it probably would not of gotten the comments that people have left. It is different I admit that. But then, so was Feudal and AOR at the beginning.

now, in my opinion your map has the exact same flaws but it adds special attack routes. when i was in school (a long time ago) i used to make various sized chess tables during class and then try to fill them with 1 knight jumping over and over. similar to this game here: http://www.flash-game.net/game/2294/troyis.html. it was much more interesting than french lessons

Everything was more interesting than French lessons, but my memory may not be up to scratch.

anyway, the only thing about this map is that you have to plan your attack route a few moves in advance to make sure you can reach all the terits you want to. and there are 2 possibilities here:1. you're a complete retard that never heard of chess and can't plan ahead more than 1 move. in which case you'll never play this map after your first game.2. you are a normal person that played chess at least once and it's perfectly capable of planning an attack route. in which case you'll never play this map once you realised that luck is too important on this map.

The thing with chess, and this to a point is that just because you move a piece to one square or another, your opponent(s) may not do what is expected.

i'm sorry but i don't really have any suggestions on how to improve this map other than a total redesign which involves more rules, the addition of bonuses etc.

Personally, I don't think the idea is totally without merit. It is taking a very specific route and koontz know what he wants from the map. Talking only the knights rules as the way to move around the board is adding something of interest.

I would air more on the side of simplistic, than boring or symmetrical. That said, I don't think it will be a hit. But at the very least it will have some interest. At least I think there will be more interest in this than any other chess variant the foundry has seen in its lifetime.

In reality I think I am on the fence for this map, leaning slightly on the side of it could work, rather than it couldn't.

thehippo8 wrote:Frankly Dim, I'm surprised by your response - it's not like you to be this negative. You are also wrong, there is an additional element of skill in this game beyond that of many other "classic" style maps. I think once this gets quenched you'll be surprised by the posibilities. In fact, I'm rather jealous that Koontz thought of the idea before me and all kudos to him!

i don't think i'm negative at all. anyway, you mention an "additional element of skill in this game". please enlighten me to what that is as i totally fail to see it.

Sorry, maybe its a chess player thing? Sometimes things are obvious to one person but not to others.

In classic maps you have pre-defined determined and unviolable lines of attck. They are static. This map has the addition of randomness in that it is quite unpredictable where a player would go and how they would concentrate their troops.

Contrary to this argument (and playing Devil's Advocate), there is a similar concept in any large map b ecause people can always go different directions.

What makes this different for me is that there is a static sstarting point with a dynamic gameplay. It will be interesting to see if this does make a difference in practicde or not. I guess we can only wait until Bta to find out!

thehippo8 wrote:Frankly Dim, I'm surprised by your response - it's not like you to be this negative. You are also wrong, there is an additional element of skill in this game beyond that of many other "classic" style maps. I think once this gets quenched you'll be surprised by the posibilities. In fact, I'm rather jealous that Koontz thought of the idea before me and all kudos to him!

i don't think i'm negative at all. anyway, you mention an "additional element of skill in this game". please enlighten me to what that is as i totally fail to see it.

Sorry, maybe its a chess player thing? Sometimes things are obvious to one person but not to others.

In classic maps you have pre-defined determined and unviolable lines of attck. They are static. This map has the addition of randomness in that it is quite unpredictable where a player would go and how they would concentrate their troops.

Contrary to this argument (and playing Devil's Advocate), there is a similar concept in any large map b ecause people can always go different directions.

What makes this different for me is that there is a static sstarting point with a dynamic gameplay. It will be interesting to see if this does make a difference in practicde or not. I guess we can only wait until Bta to find out!

actually i still don't see anything spectacular about that. on any other map you have multiple choices of attack and just like any other map some choices are better and some are worse. every move can be predicted in certain situations.

just like in chess if the opponent has to chose between taking a pawn or a queen he's obvious he's going to capture the queen and the fact that he has other choices is meaningless.

so, again, this map has nothing except for the L-shaped attack routes which are interesting only for the first minutes until you realise it plays just like any other map. only this time it's actually worse since you have no bonuses, no incentive to expand, no strategical paths to take and basically it all comes down to whoever has the best dice.

imagine taking the classic map and adding the rule that you can't attack anything adjacent but only the armies that are 2 terits away (which is actually a risk variation that i used to play with my friends). it would be almost the same as this one but with bonuses and random starting positions and variable terrain which makes for interesting paths.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku

Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts Dim. You have considerable experience as a map maker and insightful to the issues. Nevertheless, I like the idea of this map (as I see others do) and I guess time will tell if it is popular or not. Popularity is a very hard thing to judge before the event. Circus Maximus and Doodle Earth are both very popular, even though at first blush you might not expect them to be.

thehippo8 wrote: Circus Maximus and Doodle Earth are both very popular, even though at first blush you might not expect them to be.

1. circus maximus is one of the LEAST popular maps on this site even with all the fancy revamp it had. the map has a crappy gameplay and people know it. in fact people only play it because at first glance it seems interesting but they quickly give it up. it also has one of the first player retention rates.

2. doodle earth is something else. in my opinion it's a shitty crappy horrible map with very little strategy and a LOT of luck. in fact one of the most popular game types on that map is the freestyle assassin. it's such a crappy setting for this map that most games are over in round 1 or 2. a real russian roulette. judging strictly strategical gameplay point of view this map has absolutely no value but it's a damn fun one if you don't care about points or strategy. at some point many years ago i wanted to make a russian roulette map that would satisfy the very need for mindless point blowing fun. the foundry told me it's a crappy idea and that people play risk for the strategic thrill

anyway, at this point i have serious doubts about the strategy involved in this knights map. obviously i'm not saying to scrap it, im merely saying that i'm not liking it and that i would maybe play it once or twice just to see if it changes my opinion. but since i don't hold the absolute truth and i can't forsee the future this map might as well be really popular in some circles.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku

OK, DiM, I know you have your doubts, but so far you are the only dissenter. Because of that, I am going to continue with it. If it gets all the way to beta and plays badly like you expect, I will remove it and have it binned as an experiment that did not work. But if it works, like I expect it to, then great. Cannot say fairer than that. It is my time that I will have given up.

Saying that, can I have some foundry love and get a sticky/stamp.

Some things do need to be sorted before the gameplay stamp though.Neutrals - what size should they be. (I have 1 now)Starting troops - again what size. (normal 3 for now)Deployable troops - how many. (5 is on the map for now)

These for me seem OK, but DiM did huge numbers in City Mogul, can go down that route. Will that work? These are the only 3 things that need to be decided upon dealing with gameplay. I am not going to do a poll as they can be misleading. If any of you have an opinion about these numbers then let me know, if you want them changed, give a reason for it.

Still need to see opinions on these numbers. I take the silence as them being OK so I have left them alone for now.Some things do need to be sorted before the gameplay stamp though.Neutrals - what size should they be. (I have 1 now)Starting troops - again what size. (normal 3 for now)Deployable troops - how many. (5 is on the map for now)

New version.Only new thing is the font. Put the players back at the top. The knight pieces where not working for me.

Gameplay stamp is next so these things need to be talked about.Neutrals - what size should they be. (I have 1 now)Starting troops - again what size. (normal 3 for now)Deployable troops - how many. (5 is on the map for now)

Haha like the idea. Reminds me of Circus Maximum in some way, just more complicated. We often see maps with complicated bonuses but awkward attack routes isn't as common. But no bonuses? Maybe I'm wrong but I think you should reconsider that.

Gillipig wrote:Haha like the idea. Reminds me of Circus Maximum in some way, just more complicated. We often see maps with complicated bonuses but awkward attack routes isn't as common. But no bonuses? Maybe I'm wrong but I think you should reconsider that.

Why?Any bonus system that I put in will make the map more unbalanced, not less. Right now, patience is the key but if you put a bonus in, I guarantee players will head for them and try to control them fast. That takes away a lot of the skill element as soon as one of the smaller bonuses is taken, it is game over for the other player.

You eliminate the difficulty of having to plan ahead to get a bonus. If let's say you have a bunch of territs out there that if taken together results in a bonus players have to figure out how to attack to take down as few neutrals as possible and get the bonus as fast as possible. Maybe that's not the strategy you're looking for in this game but doesn't no bonuses mean dice luck matters more? Especially if there are low neutral values. If you have 1's all over the place making the wrong move and attacking the wrong regions doesn't award enough punishment! Just a thought.